ovo

Atul Gawande, Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?

The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture? [...] Among our most benign experiments are those with people who voluntarily isolate themselves for extended periods. Long-distance solo sailors, for instance, commit themselves to months at sea. They face all manner of physical terrors: thrashing storms, fifty-foot waves, leaks, illness. Yet, for many, the single most overwhelming difficulty they report is the “soul-destroying loneliness,” as one sailor called it. Astronauts have to be screened for their ability to tolerate long stretches in tightly confined isolation, and they come to depend on radio and video communications for social contact. [...] If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has? [...] The United States now has five per cent of the world’s population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.

[...] Is there an alternative? Consider what other countries do. Britain, for example, has had its share of serial killers, homicidal rapists, and prisoners who have taken hostages and repeatedly assaulted staff. The British also fought a seemingly unending war in Northern Ireland, which brought them hundreds of Irish Republican Army prisoners committed to violent resistance. The authorities resorted to a harshly punitive approach to control, including, in the mid-seventies, extensive use of solitary confinement. But the violence in prisons remained unchanged, the costs were phenomenal (in the United States, they reach more than fifty thousand dollars a year per inmate), and the public outcry became intolerable. British authorities therefore looked for another approach. Beginning in the nineteen-eighties, they gradually adopted a strategy that focussed on preventing prison violence rather than on delivering an ever more brutal series of punishments for it. The approach starts with the simple observation that prisoners who are unmanageable in one setting often behave perfectly reasonably in another. This suggested that violence might, to a critical extent, be a function of the conditions of incarceration. The British noticed that problem prisoners were usually people for whom avoiding humiliation and saving face were fundamental and instinctive. When conditions maximized humiliation and confrontation, every interaction escalated into a trial of strength. Violence became a predictable consequence. So the British decided to give their most dangerous prisoners more control, rather than less. They reduced isolation and offered them opportunities for work, education, and special programming to increase social ties and skills. The prisoners were housed in small, stable units of fewer than ten people in individual cells, to avoid conditions of social chaos and unpredictability. In these reformed “Close Supervision Centres,” prisoners could receive mental-health treatment and earn rights for more exercise, more phone calls, “contact visits,” and even access to cooking facilities. They were allowed to air grievances. And the government set up an independent body of inspectors to track the results and enable adjustments based on the data. The results have been impressive. The use of long-term isolation in England is now negligible. In all of England, there are now fewer prisoners in “extreme custody” than there are in the state of Maine. And the other countries of Europe have, with a similar focus on small units and violence prevention, achieved a similar outcome.

MetaFilter, Everything You Bever Wanted to Know About the American Prison-Industrial Complex

“I’ve gone into this in greater detail before, but it is worth remembering that, of our prison population of over 3 million, less than ten percent were convicted by trial before a jury. We’ve filled our prisons not by means of a public and transparent due process, but by backroom and off-record interrogation, by deals brokered in private and under duress.”

Bureau of Labor Statistics, How the Government Measures Unemployment:

Excluded are persons under 16 years of age, all persons confined to institutions such as nursing homes and prisons, and persons on active duty in the Armed Forces.

Christopher Beam, How Do Prisons Deal with Overcrowding?

Tight quarters lead to higher levels of violence between prisoners.

National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, Executive Summary:

More than 7.3 million Americans are confined in U.S. correctional facilities or supervised in the community, at a cost of more than $68 billion annually. [...] Air Force veteran Tom Cahill, who was arrested and detained for just a single night in a San Antonio jail, recalled the lasting effects of being gang-raped and beaten by other inmates. “I’ve been hospitalized more times than I can count and I didn’t pay for those hospitalizations, the tax payers paid. My career as a journalist and photographer was completely derailed. . . . For the past two decades, I’ve received a non-service connected security pension from the Veteran’s Administration at the cost of about $200,000 in connection with the only major trauma I’ve ever suffered, the rape.” [The Bureau of Justice Statistics] conducted the first wave of surveys in 2007 in a random sample of 146 State and Federal prisons and 282 local jails. A total of 63,817 incarcerated individuals completed surveys, providing the most comprehensive snapshot of sexual abuse in prisons and jails to date. Four-and-a-half percent of prisoners surveyed reported experiencing sexual abuse one or more times during the 12 months preceding the survey or over their term of incarceration if they had been confined in that facility for less than 12 months. Extrapolated to the national prison population, an estimated 60,500 State and Federal prisoners were sexually abused during that 12-month period. [...] Sexual abuse is not an inevitable feature of incarceration. Leadership matters because corrections administrators can create a culture within facilities that promotes safety instead of one that tolerates abuse. Certain individuals are more at risk of sexual abuse than others. Corrections administrators must routinely do more to identify those who are vulnerable and protect them in ways that do not leave them isolated and without access to rehabilitative programming. Few correctional facilities are subject to the kind of rigorous internal monitoring and external oversight that would reveal why abuse occurs and how to prevent it. Dramatic reductions in sexual abuse depend on both.

AP, Governor Delays Ohio Execution After Vein Troubles:

The team began working on [Romell] Broom, in a holding cell 17 steps from the execution chamber, at about 2 p.m., four hours after his execution was originally scheduled. That initial delay was due to a final federal appeals request.  After the team spent nearly an hour trying to find a workable vein, Broom tried to help them bring him a quicker death. He turned over on his left side, slid rubber tubing designed to clarify his veins up his left arm, then began moving the arm up and down while flexing and closing and opening his fingers. The execution team was able to access a vein, but it collapsed when technicians tried to insert saline fluid.  Broom then became visibly distressed, turning over on his back and covering his face with both hands. His torso heaved up and down and his feet shook, as he appeared to be crying. He wiped his eyes and was handed a roll of toilet paper, which he used to wipe his brow.  He sat up at the end of the bed and talked with his execution team. The team had been asking Broom whether he wanted a break, but he chose to push ahead, as did the execution staff, prisons director Terry Collins said. Collins then insisted on a break and contacted the governor to let him know about the difficulties.

Broom, who did not have any witnesses present, requested that one of his attorneys, Adele Shank, come to the witness area. She asked to speak with Broom but was told that once the process started, it’s protocol that attorneys can’t have contact with their client.  “I want to know what Romell wants,” Shank told a prison official, who told her that he was being cooperative.  “He’s always cooperative,” responded Shank. “I want to know what he wants me to do.”  At about 3:20, the team tried to insert shunts through veins in Broom’s legs as he sat upright on the table. He looked up several times during the process and appeared to grimace. A member of the execution team reached over and patted him on the back.  Roughly five minutes later, the team returned to Broom’s arms to again try to access a vein and get the saline solution to work. [...] Collins said the team would try to determine, before Broom’s next scheduled execution date, how to resolve the problem with finding suitable veins.  A medical evaluation Monday determined that veins in Broom’s right arm appeared accessible, while those in his left arm were not as visible.

David Grann, Trial by Fire:

There is a chance that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

All articles continue at links.  We all have to pick our battles, or die trying to fight on all fronts.  Prison reform isn’t as popular a topic as recycling, global warming, animal rights or same-sex marriage.  But I wish it were more popular.  I wish it was the subject of Michael Moore’s next film.  I wish it was discussed by the next set of candidates running for the Presidency of the USA.  I’ve got my ideas, if anyone is listening.  Start by ending prohibition.  Next release any prisoner with no previous legal troubles who is in prison only due to prohibition.  Then release any prisoner with a prior record but who is in prison expressly due to prohibition.  If I’m reading the statistics right, that would reduce the prison population by twenty percent.  That’s a budget increase of twenty percent to lessen prison rape, offer work opportunities or just about anything else.  I’d ban the death penalty in all states in all cases – there’s a wad of money (and lives) saved that can be put to better use.  I’d negate mandatory sentencing laws and allow judges to act as judges.  I’d see how other countries are handling things and copy what works.  Anybody listening?

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

More here and here.

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. [...] John Ashcroft’s Justice Department confirmed Edmonds’s veracity in a backhanded way by twice invoking the dubious State Secrets Privilege so she could not tell what she knows. [...] But on Aug. 8, she was finally able to testify under oath in a court case filed in Ohio and agreed to an interview with The American Conservative based on that testimony.

“During my work with the FBI, one of the major operational files that I was transcribing and translating started in late 1996 and continued until 2002, when I left the Bureau. [...] The monitoring of the Turks picked up contacts with [Douglas] Feith, [Paul] Wolfowitz, and [Richard] Perle in the summer of 2001, four months before 9/11. They were discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the U.S. would invade Iraq and divide the country. The UK would take the south, the rest would go to the U.S. They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil. The Turks were very supportive, but wanted a three-part division of Iraq to include their own occupation of the Kurdish region. The three Defense Department officials said that would be more than they could agree to, but they continued daily communications to the ambassador and his defense attaché in an attempt to convince them to help. [...]

“So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word ‘al-Qaeda.’ It was always ‘mujahideen,’ always ‘bin Laden’ and, in fact, not ‘bin Laden’ but ‘bin Ladens’ plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.  There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back. (Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?) 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.”

Article continues.  More on Sibel Edmonds from her official website, Wikipedia, History Commons, CBS News, Let Sibel Edmonds Speak, and National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

EsoZone is a mutant unconference, Portland Oregon USA, October 9 and 10 2009.  See you there!

Astronaut Frank Culbertson photographs ground zero on 9/11 while in the International Space Station.  “What a frightening sight this must have been. How many sci-fi shows and movies are there, where the crew of a spaceship watches helplessly as their planet is attacked?” – John in Canada at nasawatch.com.

Gareth Porter, Bush had no plan to catch Bin Laden: New evidence [Oct 1, 2008] from former United States officials reveals that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were able to skip Afghanistan for Pakistan unimpeded in the first weeks after September 11, 2001, as the George W Bush administration failed to plan to block their retreat. Top administration officials instead gave priority to planning for war with Iraq, leaving the United States with not nearly enough troops or strategic airlift capacity to close the large number of possible exit routes through the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area where Bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Bush Covered Up Saudi Involvement in 9/11: The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee tells Salon that the White House has suppressed convincing evidence that the Saudi royal family supported at least two of the hijackers. As the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and the run-up to the Iraq war, Sen. Bob Graham tried to expose what he came to believe were national security coverups and manipulations by the Bush administration. But he discovered that it was hard to reveal a coverup playing by the rules. Much of the evidence the Florida Democrat needed to buttress his arguments was being locked away, he found, under the veil of politically motivated classification. Gerald Posner, The CIA’s Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection: U.S. intelligence established a so-called “fake flag” operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers. Instead, when confronted by his “Saudi” interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. “He will tell you what to do,” Zubaydah assured them. That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd’s nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

Verbatim Quotes from Republicans when Clinton was Prez.: “Domestic terrorism is not a cause we have to fight or a project we need to fund. We are not interested in capturing bin Laden. Even though he has been offered to us. We are not the world’s policemen. It’s not our job to clean up other countries messes or arrest it’s bad guys.” Senior Senator Mitch McConnell (R).

Radley Balko, Six Years Later [2007] Bin Laden Still Free, U.S. Mired in Iraq: We have created in Iraq the exact type of scenario Bin Laden was hoping (but failed) to lure us into in Afghanistan [...] our only options are bad and worse.

Robert Scheer, Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban: [Los Angeles Times May 22, 2001] Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That’s the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that “rogue regime” for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban’s estimation, are most human activities, but it’s the ban on drugs that catches this administration’s attention. Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.

heavy drinkers – but also teetotalers — have higher levels of depression and anxiety than those who drink moderately.

Teetotalers More Likely To Be Depressed Than Moderate Drinkers

Camp for Climate is “a place for anyone who wants to take action on climate change.”

The Climate Camp is too self-regarding to be effective: Its critics have levelled many charges whenever it has appeared over the last few years [...] And while some criticisms have a kernel of truth, it remains hard to argue that a movement fighting climate change and promoting social equality is a bad thing. But that is not the question. Rather, Climate Camp should be judged on its own ambitions. How effective is the camp in inspiring change?

It is confronting this issue that lies at the heart of one of the key works on grass-roots organising: Rules for Radicals written by Saul Alinsky who inspired US radicals in the 1960s and 1970s. A revolutionary in outlook who began agitating for social change in the Chicago stockyards in the 1930s, Alinsky’s methodology has proved to have had a greater relevance and longer shelf-life than perhaps he ever expected. In recent history, it not only informed Barack Obama’s early political organising, but its tactics have been adopted by the US Republican right to disrupt Obama’s health policies. So how does the Climate Camp fare judged by his rules?

In some respects, Alinsky, who died in 1972, would have admired the Climate Campers’ dedication. “Liberals protest; radicals rebel,” he wrote. “Liberals become indignant; radicals become fighting mad and go into action.” Alinsky, however, is unlikely to have approved of much of the Climate Campers’ methodology. The problem with the Climate Campers is not a lack of conviction (as some commentators try to argue); it stems, rather, from an obsession with its own structures and its relationship with media and the police.

More seriously, seen from Alinsky’s point of view (he believed in “not rhetoric, but realism”), the Climate Camp suffers from a preoccupation with measuring its achievements in terms of the protests it has undertaken rather than a series of achievable goals that those outside the camp movement can easily identify with.

Alinsky insisted the radical must be able to make a persuasive case for why change is necessary and urgent, a task to which the theatrics of protesting are subsidiary. He taught another crucial lesson, one that has been highly visible in the right’s campaign against Obama’s health reforms, that campaigners should avoid targeting abstracts such as phenomena and institutions; instead, they should single out individual figures to act as the “personification… of a particular evil”. To lever their positions through ridicule and criticism.

Climate change and social equality aside, what appealed to me about this article is the rare mass media mention of the fluid lines between political camps. The goals and tactics of one camp become the goals and tactics of another camp in the next generation. Sometimes the shift happens because the other camp rejects or revises their goals, sometimes because they see tactical success in the other camp. But goals and tactics shift as often as not due to powerful individuals with personal preferences, or as solicitation for mass approval by politicians willing to pinch their noses and roll in all sorts of filth if it maintains and expands their power.

History is not goal-oriented. History does not inevitably build toward a better world based on past successes. Things just happen. The eugenics movement of one generation becomes the family planning movement of the next. The inherently atheist left goes all woo-woo. The children of yesterday’s conservatives can’t have a government too gigantic today. One generation says “the war on want is the war we want” and advocates Europe a Nation, the next fights a “war on want” and lives in an European Union. Advocates of freedom for their sex team up with their opponents to fight sexual freedom. Universal suffrage turns out to not be so universal after all. Temperance becomes the war on drugs. Rarefied French philosophy is later sold as a lowest common denominator consumer product.

Political camps do learn from each other. But they also ape each other because it seems exciting or popular. Political parties and most political groups are package deals. You hopefully get some of what you want among plenty of what you don’t want. But politics itself is not a package deal. The shifting goals and tactics found in history is evidence, but your own complex views are the proof. Politics are maddening but keep on advocating for what is right and true. Political correctness, left and right, be damned.

This book has been called a “Manual of terror” by Max Geltman, writing in National Review (July 22, 1971). I find this phrase aptly descriptive, but not in the same sense that Mr. Geltman would have us believe.

This “cookbook” consists of three basic parts: an introduction by Professor Bergman entitled “Anarchism today,” and two much longer sections by William Powell on drug and explosive manufacturing.

If ever there were an example of Orwellian doublespeak, this is it! “Anarchism Today” is basically an interpretation of the philosophic roots of anarchism, awkwardly coupled with sketchy references to current events. Almost all of the intellectuals discussed are from the Nineteenth Century; and there is virtually no mention of the writings from 1930 to present. This may be expected from someone who appears to have briefly studied the topic while at college during the 1920’s, and thereafter relied only on superficial newspaper accounts. Bergman should have been aware of Albert Jay Nock, for example, and anarchists today are certainly aware of Murray Rothbard, Karl Hess, etc.

Bergman considers Nihilism to be a form of Anarchism, and Anarchism a form of radical revolutionism. He interprets Marxism in an anarchistic light, and correctly suggests that Communist governments today are feudal / reactionary. However, his emphasis on the Marxist element in anarchist intellectual tradition is clearly one-sided. A more through and fair analysis can be found in Native American Anarchism (1932) by Eunice Minette Schuster.

Bergman’s emphasis on the Nihilistic and destructive aspects of Anarchism I find disturbing. This emphasis seems to arise from the axiom that the State is all, so to oppose the State is to oppose everything. Anarchists do not have to propose a concrete alternative because that would be authoritarian.

The rest of this book consists mainly of drug and explosive recipes relayed to us by William Powell. His motivation for doing so is supposedly to allow the “silent majority” access to information which he claims only the radical groups now possess. The idea of a “silent majority” comes from classical Greek literature and in that context referred to the dead who are the real majority. If you follow the steps outlined in these recipes, you may soon join them! the Library Journal (March 15, 1971) puts it this way:

“Much of it is so sketchy as to be harmless, but there are a number of booby traps still for the nitwit who wishes to try them. There are drug making recipes…that may make one very ill…there are also a number of stunts which could backfire on the idiot who tries them.”

Let’s get down to specifics.

Ed Rosenthal told me that he had spent a lot of time trying to track down the rumors of pot growing in New York sewers. Well, I just may have stumbled on the origin of the “New York White” rumors. Despite what Powell may think, plants are not as adaptable as alligators and need light to grow. Another choice quote: “…strangely enough, insects ignore marijuana and do no harm.” Strange indeed.

The DEA has a Precursor Control Program watch list. This means that if you buy large quantities of the common precursors to illegal chemicals, the Federal Government may take an interest in your activities. Several of the chemicals on this list are used in Mr. Powell’s LSD recipe, such as Acetonitrile, Trifluoroacetic Anhydride, Dimethylformamide, and Diethylamine. Benzene is also on the list, and my also arouse the interest of the EPA because it is a known cancer-causing agent.

Much the same can be said of many of his other recipes, and in some cases the precursors are as hard to get as he final product. For instance, his recipe for DMT starts out with indole, which is quite hard to get. Much better methods using L-Tryptophan (available in most health-food stores) are covered in “Synthesis” (1973 – present).

Powell suggests ground up nutmeg for a psychedelic experience. Nutmeg has a poor dose/toxicity ratio! However, the oil extract of Nutmeg, containing myristicin, can be used in the synthesis of MMDA – a better and mellower high than MDA. See Journal of Psychedelic Drugs (Vol. 8, #4, October-December 1976).

On page 58 of Powell’s cookbook, Nalline is described as “…a freak – a drug someone forgot to make illegal.” Perhaps they forgot because Nalorphine is a powerful narcotic antagonist, which tents to produce violent convulsive reactions in morphine addicts. (See the Merck Index.)

For more information on drugs, see “The clandestine Drug Laboratory Situation in the U.S.”, Journal of Forensic Sciences (January 1983, p. 18- 31.) This article, obligingly written by the DEA chief, reports that none of the 17 labs busted the previous year were successful in producing what was intended to be produced. The busted chemists were relying on recipes from popular “underground” drug manufacturing books. It was noted that such books contain errors which prevent the manufacture of the desired chemicals, while at the same time drawing the attention of government authorities because of the precursors recommended.

Let’s now examine his recommendations for manufacturing explosives:

His methods for producing Mercury Fulminate is incomplete and dangerous. Between steps 2 and 3, the solution should be cooled. Do not breathe the fumes. See A Dictionary of Applied Chemistry by Sir Edward Thorpe.

Powell’s recipe entitled “How to Make TNT” is also quite dangerous and incomplete. In step 1, mixing sulfuric acid and nitric acid will likely result in fulmination and red toxic fumes. Also the crude method he describes does not cover the removal of the Ortho-Dinitro groups. If this were not done, the TNT would be extremely unstable. However, they can be removed with great ease by heating the crude material with aqueous sodium sulfite. See Chemistry of Explosives by George Wright, University of Toronto, in Organic Chemistry (p. 974).

The description of picric acid does not sufficiently emphasize its unstable nature. For example, storing it in a cracked glass container may cause it to explode. See “Thorpe’s”. However, on page 120 he describes two relatively safer and easily obtainable chemicals (potassium bichromate and potassium permanganate) as very sensitive, unstable, and too hazardous to work with.

He does have a couple of pages on general safety precautions, but the language suggests that they have been lifted from a military manual. Also, he uses the German spelling for some chemicals. If you attempt to order chemicals from an American company using German spelling, your order would likely be looked at with suspicion.

The Anarchist Cookbook was originally published in 1971; the review by the Library Journal, which exposed these dangerous errors, came shortly thereafter. I wonder why it has gone through 26 printings without these errors being corrected. My theory is that Mr. Powell is not an anarchist, but in reality is spreading disinformation to potential enemies of the government. At the time of original publication, Mr. Powell was an unknown 21-year-old college freshman. Where did he get access to this “information?” He says, from radical friends on both the left and right.

The Minuteman Manual is listed in the bibliography. The original Minutemen were colonial American revolutionaries. In the ’60’s there was a radical offshoot of the John Birch Society called the Minutemen; they have since been disbanded by the FBI. It is not likely that the 1960’s Minutemen would have handed out their manual to a long-haired 21-year-old college freshman. Also, the John Birch Society and the Minutemen are opposed to the United Nations, and Powell’s father was a powerful bureaucrat in the UN propaganda ministry (see Newsweek, April 12, 1971.) Things are getting curiouser and curiouser!

This same William Powell has also written a book entitled Saudi Arabia and its Royal Family (1982). It consists of interviews with members of the Saudi royal family and other observations gathered while teaching at the University of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It does not seem likely that the Saudi royal family would give such generous treatment to a real anarchist. Reading the Saudi book, I came across some interesting quotes (p. 17):

“Were something or someone to cut the flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf, the result would be truly apocalyptic or the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and much of the developing world…In a worst case scenario, all gasoline available would go to essential services such as the military, the police and fire departments, and the transportation of foodstuffs. Most nonessential businesses and industries would close. Unemployment would skyrocket.”

“All major cities would, in all probability, have to be placed under martial law. Curfews would be enforced at gunpoint…Inflation would metamorphose…into a lethal epidemic. We would enter a wheelbarrow economy like that of Germany prior to Hitler’s rise to power.”

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. While his pessimistic analysis does not take full account of the market’s ability to conserve and switch to alternate fuels, I think a more important point is that Powell seems to believe that government is as essential as the transportation of foodstuffs, and that it can help solve the fuel crisis through the draconian methods he describes. If governments were to run out of gas tomorrow, anarchists would be dancing in celebration.

(Mr. Powell’s talk of martial law is not fantasy. Executive Order #11490, signed by Richard Nixon in October 1969, allows the president to assume dictatorial powers after declaring a “national emergency.”)

It just doesn’t add up, unless an alternative theory is developed to explain these anomalies. My attempts to get the other side of the story from the publisher were met with a stone wall of silence. My suggestion is that much of Powell’s disinformation and influence may have come from the Trilateral Commission and / or the CIA. A U.S. Air Force combat controllers group studying theory would seem to dovetail with the National Review article which presented The Anarchist Cookbook at face valued and even included a patronizing reference to “the boys at Harvard.” It is well known that W.F. Buckley, the National Review editor, is a Yale graduate and once served the CIA in Mexico. (E. Howard Hunt, of Watergate fame, was CIA paymaster in Mexico City at the same time Buckley served.)

I would like to quote Mr. Powell from the April 12, 1971 issue of Newsweek: “My book places power in the hands of the individual, where it belongs. The right calls it communist, the leftists call it profiteering, the liberals call it Neo-Nazi.”

And this reviewer calls it bullshit!

alcohol-dependent patients received naltrexone, acamprosate or placebo for 12 weeks. [1] there were no differences in outcomes between treatment groups [2] irrespective of actual treatment, perceived medication allocation predicted health outcomes.

Learning More About The Placebo Effect